1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to bone saw guides for cutting a bone. More particularly, this invention relates to bone saw guides for angularly cutting a bone, in parallel cuts, allowing a bone segment to be removed and the complementary cut ends compressed together to shorten the bone.
2. Description of the Background Art
During bone shortening, it is often difficult to freehandedly cut a bone with a hand held saw, at precisely parallel cuts, so that a bone segment can be removed and the complementary ends of the bone compressed together at perfectly matching angles. Improper matching upon compression results in gaps in the compressed bone ends and therefore requires excessive healing time.
It ca be readily appreciated that considerable skill is required to properly position the saw blade so that two parallel cuts are made through the bone at the desired angle and location along the longitudinal length of the bone.
Double-bladed bone saws have been developed to facilitate removal of bone segments. Basically, double-bladed bone saws comprise two parallel saw blades spaced apart from each other by a distance equal to the thickness of the bone segment to be removed and fixedly connected to a drive shaft. A motor rotates or oscillates the drive shaft causing simultaneous rotation or oscillation of the parallel blades. When freehandedly positioned against a bone, the blades simultaneously saw two parallel cuts in the bone. When cut through, the resulting bone segment is removed. Unfortunately, double-bladed saws must still be positioned freehandedly and are therefore subject to cutting the bone segment at a undesired angle or at an undesired location along the longitudinal length of the bone.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide an apparatus which overcomes the aforementioned inadequacies of the prior art devices and provides an improvement which is a significant contribution to the advancement of the bone cutting art.
Another object of this invention is to provide a bone saw guide allowing perpendicular or angular cutting of a bone.
Another object of this invention is to provide a bone saw guide allowing the sawing of two parallel cuts through a bone so that a bone segment is removed from the bone.
Another object of this invention is to provide a bone saw guide for cutting a bone segment from a bone at precise angles so that the resulting bone ends are cut at complementary angles for precise matching, with no gaps, when the ends of the bone are compressed together.
The foregoing has outlined some of the more pertinent objects of the invention. These objects should be construed to be merely illustrative of some of the more prominent features and applications of the intended invention. Many other beneficial results can be obtained by applying the disclosed invention in a different manner or modifying the invention within the scope of the disclosure. Accordingly, other objects and a fuller understanding of &.he invention may be had by referring to the summary of the invention and the detailed description of the preferred embodiment in addition to the scope of the invention defined by the claims taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.